StikiWeb Wiki - UserProfiles.BigLee

Allen L (BigLee) Haslup

Software Developer

Lee is the original author of the StikiWeb Wiki. Any design errors or coding bugs are undoubtedly his fault. Any brilliance in the design or excellence in the code should be taken as evidence that others have contributed to the project.

Lee has worked with a number of computer languages on a number of platforms ranging from the "Compass" assembly language for the CDC 6000 series of mainframe computers to Java on Linux. The list is rather too long to go through but here are a few that he remembers fondly:

MetaFortran -- a pre-processor for CDC Fortran-66 that gave it block-based control structures, compilation constants, and a number of other features. The Meta Fortran pre-processor was written in Meta Fortran.

BDS C for the CP/M OS on a Zilog Z80 system. By the time Lee started working with the BDS C compiler the company had declared that "BDS" stood for "Brass Dragon Software" and was categorically denying that it had ever stood for "Brain Damaged Software." This name change was an indicator that the microprocessor was turning the corner from being mostly a hobbiest toy to a new role as a commercially viable property.

Clips -- an embedded forward-chaining inference engine that could be called from a C language front end.

Smalltalk.The object-oriented language. Lee still grieves for it a bit, although he has come to like Java nearly as much. He remembers a joke that the C++ types liked to tell, back in the day -- Q: "What doesn't a pilot want to see on his avionics display?" A: "Message not understood." There is a Smalltalker version of the joke. It has the same question but the answer is different. Q: "What doesn't a pilot want to see on his avionics display?" A: "Segmentation Violation: Core Dumped."

Java Quite a nice language, actually. A lot can be done with it. This Wiki being a case in point.